Finally saw it, and I have to say Rogue One is pretty much the best Star Wars movie to hit the screen since the credits rolled on Empire Strikes Back. It manages to prove that it is possible to do several things that have evaded the film franchise since the introduction of ewoks: Apparently Read more…
“Cultural Appropriation” has reared it’s sombrero-sporting head in the literary community once again in another series of critiques and critiques of critiques and critiques of critiquing and those doing the critiquing, over something that should, in the end, be a fairly straightforward caution for authors to just get it right, Read more…
So I noticed that the movie Zootopia is on Netflix now, and it reminded me of a little fan theory I developed back when I saw the movie in theatres. If you’ve seen it, you may have noticed something that differentiates this film from the typical Disney (or any) “funny Read more…
I mentioned Suicide Squad in my prior blog, and I did indeed see it in the theatre the other day. So what did I think? Well, most of the folks critical of the movie are right, it is badly flawed— and almost all those flaws can be attributed to the Read more…
How many of you remember the Tobe Hooper film, Lifeforce, from 1985? It’s probably the only piece of genre pop-culture from the 80’s that Stranger Things didn’t pay homage to— possibly due to the combination of full-frontal nudity and zombies. Lifeforce hasn’t gotten the same love from posterity as Tobe Hooper’s other Read more…
I’ve finally seen the most recent Star Trek film and it has my enthusiastic approval. No it’s not the original series. But, IMO, that’s a plus. The major weakness of the first two post-reboot movies were the ham-handed attempts to tie this Star Trek to that Star Trek. This is Read more…
So there was this Ghostbusters remake/reboot that caused a lot of angst among various peoples. Since I’ve yet to see it (I’ll probably wait until it’s on Netflix.) I don’t have an opinion on it one way or another. But the existence of the film has made me ponder the idea of remakes/reboots in general; why they work (Battlestar Galactica, Casino Royale), limp past the post (Star Trek, Miami Vice), or explode in an incandescent glory of fail (The Wicker Man, The Day The Earth Stood Still.)
One obvious thing is that decent quality source material doesn’t guarantee the quality of a remake. In fact, it often seems that there is an inverse relationship; the better the original, the worse subsequent attempts seem. That may be simply a side effect of comparing the two. After all, it’s easier to improve on a crappy movie than improve on a great one, and making any movie worse is the easiest task of all. It also seems to me that the best remakes take the existing property and do something new with it (counter-example and failure: Psycho). Much is made of “gritty reboots,” so much so that it’s now a cliché, but there’s also the “campy reboot” that can also work/not work just as well (see Dragnet or Dark Shadows), what matters is that the change in tone gives a reason for the remake to exist. The gender flip in Ghostbusters obviously serves a similar meta-purpose, to change the story enough to justify the movie’s existence.
With that in mind, here are five stories I’d like to see getting remade.
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It’s done. When the creative class itself packs their bags and calls it quits, it’s over. This is where we end. Any tyrant now knows that they can suppress any artistic expression they don’t like just by making some threats. The temptation is to retaliate. Make fun of North Korea Read more…
I’ve just recently started catching up with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Netflix, and I started thinking about how well Marvel has done with its properties since Iron Man came out all the way back in 2008. A lot has been said already about the “shared universe” idea, and how “revolutionarily” Read more…
A couple of months ago I suggested that Guardians of the Galaxy deserved to be this generation’s Star Wars. In a similar vein, I think Interstellar wants to be this generation’s 2001. And, unlike some other movies I could name, Interstellar comes a lot closer to the mark. In large Read more…